Accessible Healthcare vs Affordable Healthcare

Most individuals need to be more positive about visiting a doctor. The strong belief of a lot of people in my country (India) is that hospitals are there to cheat and once you visit them, they will be charged a hefty amount and asked to take multiple tests which might be unnecessary.

Although I agree with this, I have a different opinion about healthcare services in India. As an Embryologist I have worked in healthcare for the past 5 years. Healthcare is certainly expensive. Since I am an Embryologist I can break down the expenses of an IVF cycle. On average, a single IVF cycle costs about 3-5 lakh sometimes even 10 lakh rupees. The culture media (solution) we use to keep the embryo costs about a lakh ($1000), which is pretty expensive in my country. That’s how expensive a single product we use in IVF is. The entire procedure requires several hormonal injections, surgical retrieval of eggs, and fusing the egg with the sperm using microscopic needles. Every single consumable we use for the procedure is very expensive. In addition, the procedure cost will include fees for doctors, embryologists, and nurses. And the hospital has to make some profit. Medicine is a business whether we like to hear it or not. Of course, every single procedure big or small is priced with some profit. The profit from the tests goes into the pockets of the owners (not denying) But, they also go into infra. Hospitals these days look like 5-star hotels, with cafes on each floor, gift shops, and whatnot. Let’s remember how clean the environment is. How clean each patient’s ward is. All this is possible through the excess money that each of these corporate hospitals are charging.

To all those complaining about hospitals, I urge them to get treated at Government Hospitals (GH). In India, Government hospitals charge no fee for any test, or procedure (mostly). And the doctors working there are the most qualified for the job. I remember going to the GH for a small check-up for my father. When you look at the environment, it’s nasty. It’s dirty, there’s no space and there is the weird smell of phenyl all around, bird poop all around, kids’ diapers thrown around, and patients vomiting in corners with no housekeeping staff to clean every half hour once. My father had complaints of chest pain so we went to the cardiology department to do a few tests. It was in 2021 while COVID was still on and off. There was this small corridor with multiple rooms on each side. There were about 200 people easily packed in the corridor. There was the vitals ECG room, ultrasound room, and a couple of other rooms for tests. The results were handed to us immediately because it was just the reading, there were no fancy files with type reports or anything. Once all the readings were collected we were asked to go to the consultation room which was a huge room with about 5 doctors on the other side of the table and multiple chairs for patients to sit on this side. There was so much noise, each doctor was explaining the condition to their patients all at the same time. There was no concept of privacy or personal treatment. But, the diagnosis was perfect and the consultant doctors were so kind.

We want it all (not in the wrong way). Clean environments, private patient suits, and perfect care at a minimal cost. Logistically it’s just not possible. No one is forcing us to go to the most expensive corporate hospitals to get treated. We are all given a choice to choose the hospital to get treated. There are affordable hospitals, moderately pricey hospitals, and expensive ones. It’s just not fair for people to choose their hospitals and complain about how doctors are cheating and how hospitals are just doing dirty business. I do agree that some hospitals overprice their cost of testing but, again it’s not all hospitals. People need to do their proper research and go where the treatment would be affordable and most suitable for them.

In India, Apollo is one of the biggest chains of hospitals with great healthcare. Apollo has specialists for almost every disease. However, it is also one of the most expensive hospitals. Apollo Cancer Center is the first in South Asia and the Middle East to have proton therapy. Several cancer patients are benefitting from this treatment. Apollo can establish such expensive equipment (~ INR 500 crore) by increasing their treatment cost in general.

Whether we like it or not, healthcare is also a business at the end of the day seeing profit and loss. If every healthcare institute ever were to avail cheap treatments there wouldn’t be groundbreaking research and cure for diseases. But, this is only my opinion. I am not supporting or justifying any institution and its practices. The above can be considered my reasoning for why healthcare is expensive in India.